ECONOMIC CRISIS, INSTITUTIONAL CONFIDENCE AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN SPAIN

This paper analyzes the effects of the economic crisis in main political Spanish leaders in an exploratory way. For understanding the politics of the recent years is necessary to know the consequences of this crisis on leaders and political institutions that they manage. In representative democracies, political leaders have to maintain confidence with their followers to justify the political actions of the formers. Therefore, and according to theoretical interpretations and data presented in this paper, institutional confidence becomes a key factor to understand the effects of the economic crisis on the political leadership. Thus, the decline of institutional confidence is related with the increasing delegitimization of main political leaders and with the profound crisis of political legitimacy.